A visit to Africa
by planet p
Summary: AU; just what the title says.


**A visit to Africa** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

"Put those away, boy!"

Miss Parker felt a stab in her chest. She'd just spent hours on a commercial flight, then more hours on a private jet, to make it to the Center's African branch from Delaware, and Raines acted as though she didn't exist, choosing instead to address her brother.

Lyle made a face and looked away. "It's not passing, not between _our_ kind and _your_ kind," he said, wincing slightly.

"What am I to construe by that, boy?" Raines demanded gruffly.

"I do have a name," Lyle told him, now frowning at the floor. "I mean, you could use that, if you haven't forgotten. You sound like my high school Math teacher. I'm not a 'boy.'"

Raines scowled.

"No. I know that they say we're different, I know that. It's the same anomaly, though, as far as anyone's been able to… you know… detect. They don't… they shouldn't…"

Raines held a hand up to silence him. "Enough!"

"I realise that I'm not old enough to have experienced it the first time," Lyle continued, "but that doesn't make it any more right, or any less dangerous. What if it was to break containment-"

Raines knocked loudly on the sheet of glass between them to illustrate and Lyle finally looked up from the floor and frowned at him, commenting to himself rapidly in Afrikaans, and prompting a glare from Raines.

Lyle turned back to Miss Parker. "He's going to die. Say what you have to say," he advised her, and walked around her and away toward the door.

"Your boy's cheerful today, might I say," Raines commented.

Miss Parker stepped closer to the glass, frowning disgustedly. "I'm not Catherine," she told him.

"I'm well aware of whom you are, my love," Raines replied. "You'd want to be keeping a close and sharp eye on that boy now, children do tend to wander, as is their disposition."

Miss Parker glared.

"Mmm," Raines responded. "The boy is right, of course. Once they'd detected the anomaly in my blood, they thought that a little test would be in order."

"You're dying," Miss Parker stated.

"Yes," Raines replied casually.

"Why would they do that?"

"They thought that I'd be strong enough to fight it, you see, my love. They'd read about it, heard about it, but they'd never actually tested it. It was about time, I suppose."

Miss Parker frowned. "You mean to say-"

"Mmm."

"The plague that wiped out massive amounts of T-Corp's people at the beginning of last century?"

"T-Corp, others, ordinary people… It was across the board, my dear."

"Surely they're not planning-"

"On re-releasing it? I've no idea, at all, as to their intention, nor as to what they might or might not be planning, my dear."

"They can't-"

"They're Africa. They do, and always have." Raines lowered his voice. "When your brother was fourteen months old, they had him upgraded. Don't you presume to tell me what they do and don't do, Miss Parker! I know better than you – on all counts."

Miss Parker gave a small laugh. "My br-"

"Theodore!" Raines growled. "Theodore! Noah!"

Miss Parker balled her hand up into a fist and beat it on the glass. "You're a liar!" she growled.

Raines smiled and shook his head.

Miss Parker turned swiftly, and exited the room. She didn't need to listen to that! Not anymore! He was dying!

* * *

Miss Parker was escorted by Sweepers to the dining hall and found her brother sitting at a table by the vending machines, reading a magazine.

He pushed a coffee across the table when she got close enough, and turned the page on the magazine, which, she noted, was, in fact, a journal.

_"You are, and always have been, more of a mother to that boy than his own mother ever was-"_

Miss Parker remembered Raines's last words before the door had shut and cut him off, and shuddered. She sat down at the table but did not immediately sip her coffee, after all, Lyle had gotten it for her; she didn't trust it.

"What's that you're reading?" she asked, and Lyle handed her the journal. He'd finished reading it, in any case.

Miss Parker flipped a couple of pages back toward the front of the journal, but she couldn't make out a word of what was written, except, at the beginning of the article Lyle had been reading, the author's name: _Dr. Sydney W. Green_.

"It's in what… Dutch?" she said, shaking her head.

Lyle glanced at her.

"You can read Dutch?"

Lyle smiled. "No. No, I just Pretend that I can…!" He rolled his eyes.

Miss Parker glared at him.

"I'd hardly be any kind of translator if I couldn't, don't you think?" Lyle said.

Miss Parker continued to glare.

"I'm not _just_ a sociopath, or a Sweeper."

"Which is how you speak Afrikaans?"

"And there you were, thinking that it was just because I _liked_ JR!" Lyle joked.

_JR Cox_, Miss Parker thought dryly. "That wouldn't rule it out," she replied noncommittally. "Frankie was your doing, and Frankie's a female's name."

"Hey, I wasn't the one calling him Ani!"

"For Anakin Skywalker."

"For Dr. Frankenstein," Lyle said.

"Porn star eyes?"

"It's better than Chimpy."

Miss Parker snorted.

"Sydney did," Lyle told her.

Miss Parker rolled her eyes. "I don't know, I thought people were going for the whole Grim Reaper thing Jarod had going."

"Kinda got old," Lyle replied.

Miss Parker sighed, and took a small sip of her coffee. "I didn't know Sydney was still publishing."

"Sydney's always still something someone doesn't know about," Lyle told her. "Watch him, he's tricky."

"And Africa has his paper."

"People like Sydney, for the most part."

"Because he's a Bartholomew supporter?" Miss Parker laughed. She agreed with whoever it was who always wrote on the Center's psychology journals: _Bartholomew is a tool!_ Secretly, she hoped it was Broots, or Sam, though she knew their handwriting well enough to know that it wasn't.

Though, Sydney had said whoever had written it was left-handed, so she supposed it could still have been Broots or Sam, if they'd practised extra hard at writing with their non-dominant hand.

"Oh, I suppose that might be part of the reason, but you know me, honestly can't fathom _normal_ people, sociopath and all that I am." He smiled.

"'Normal' comes from 'norm,' you never know how many sick people there are out there. You could be the normal one and I could be the _crazy_ one!"

Lyle rolled his eyes. "That kinda makes it boring."

Miss Parker smiled and sipped her coffee. "Girls just like the _crazy ones_ so much better, huh?" She glanced at Sydney's name in the journal again. "Why are you wearing reading glasses?" she asked suddenly.

"So I can read, I imagine," Lyle replied, turning to the index in the front of the journal.

Miss Parker made a face. "Oh, we're not reading Bartholomew!"

"Speak for yourself," Lyle told her.

Miss Parker put her coffee down and reached for the journal. "You're not! That man is a total idiot!"

Lyle held the journal away from her.

Miss Parker huffed. "Read Randolph's instead. I heard he gets into fights, at least."

"He was standing up for Raines, and, then, only because Sydney was with him."

"Not much of a fighter, then, eh? He's not as full of himself as Bartholomew, at least, and, hey, that's a reasonable start."

"Or a slow one."

Miss Parker made a face. "Would you quit sticking up for the Tool! My coffee's getting the urge to be buddies!"

Lyle rolled his eyes. "I wasn't sticking up for Lyle," he told her, annoyed.

"And don't _call him by his first name!_ I happen to have strong aversion to that name!"

Lyle rolled his eyes again.

"Raines said your real name is Theodore," Miss Parker replied quietly. "I like that one much better."

Lyle smiled, amused, for a moment. "Robert," he told her. "My real name is Robert."

Miss Parker grinned. "Oh, yeah, because… you're not really my brother, are you?" she growled. "Theodore is! And Theodore's Noah, and he's _dead_!" She glared.

Lyle smiled shortly, then returned his attention to the journal in his hands.

Miss Parker pushed her coffee away from her and crossed her arms, willing her face into a casual expression of no particular note. _Just my luck,_ she thought bitterly, _Noah was _wonderful_, and I get stuck with a homicidal lunatic who doesn't even like his own name, which is supposed to mean 'brilliant,' as if that could ever be a replacement for my _twin_!_


End file.
